or perhaps, one day, i'll give in to truth
by Icestorm238
Summary: The King's reign is over, the heroes have passed through and left, and Rouxls Kaard still does not care about Lancer. Except, well, he kind of does.


The child is dwarfed by his father's throne, sitting with his legs dangling, so far forward that he's not even close to the backrest.

He's alone in the room (well, except for the now-empty cages lining the back wall, and for that one checkers piece he'd thrown at the heroes, which is toddling inexplicably back and forth inside one of the cages), slouched on the throne, surrounded by a mosaic of - are those candy wrappers? Rouxls isn't sure he wants to know.

He asks anyway.

"Mine Prince, prithee, art those wrappeths of candy?"

Lancer jolts, teetering at the edge of his too-large seat, and Rouxls cannot help but jerk forward himself - to do what, he's not sure. Certainly not to catch the boy if he falls; Rouxls would rather see the child injured _._

The brat steadies himself (and Rouxls is not relieved, he's _not_ ) and beams at Rouxls. "Lesser Dad! Hey! I haven't seen you since I became the dad!" He pauses, brow furrowing, then continues, "Does that make you my Lesser Not-Dad now?"

"Let's just sticketh with Lesser Dad," Rouxls answers hurriedly - that name is bad enough; it doesn't need to get any worse. He adds, "The candy?" as an afterthought, because Lancer is Very Good at getting sidetracked (and Rouxls has a lot of experience to back that up).

"Oh yeah, it's candy." Guilt and - is that fear? - flicker across his face. "I know I'm not supposed to eat the candy, but-"

Rouxls frowns. "Sayest who?"

He knows, of course. He has a handwritten list of Things Lancer Is Not Allowed To Do pinned up in his shop; the King had created new rules as he saw fit, and Rouxls had begun to struggle to remember them all. The List is currently at five pages, front and back in tiny script, and Rouxls has lost track of how many times Lancer has come to the shop to clarify them. Rouxls is usually unable to answer him without consulting The List himself.

Lancer stares back at him blankly. "My dad?" is his hesitant, _you should know this_ response.

"Thine father, who art currentlyst in Prisone? Who doth not haveth much sayest in matters anymoreth?"

The way Lancer perks up, blinding smile returning full-force at the reminder, mirrors Rouxls' own relief at the removal of the King. To be able to walk freely, without fear of the slightest misstep ending in incarceration or death, is a luxury Rouxls has long forgotten. Even standing in this room, torn apart as it is by the King's battle (why it hasn't been cleaned up by now, Rouxls doesn't know) sends shivers down his spine and chills through his soul, despite the person he faces now being the complete opposite of the threat his father posed.

He can hardly remember how it is to not feel afraid in his every waking moment. He is not sure he will ever lose his (now too natural, too normal, too instinctive) habits, the ones that kept him alive and uncaged for so long.

"So I'm allowed to eat candy now?" Lancer asks, still grinning.

"I do not thinketh thoust needst to Followe any of thine rules anymore," Rouxls shrugs, "given that thou art the King. Anywayst, thou doth not needeth mine Opinione; thou art King!"

He repeats that last part - he's not entirely sure that the magnitude of the role Lancer has undertaken has fully sunk in with the child.

Lancer does not reply to that, as irritatingly as he always is (and Rouxls didn't emphasise it out of concern for the kid - no, he did it because he does not want a repeat of his father's reign). "But I value your opinion," Lancer blinks. "You're my Lesser Dad."

The stabbing pain in Rouxls' chest is due to the annoying nickname, nothing more.

"Whatever," he grumbles, thoroughly uncaring. "But wherest didst thou findeth such vast quantities of candyst?"

"I asked one of the Rudinns to get some for me," Lancer admits, twisting one of the empty wrappers in his hands. He shuffles until he hits the backrest of the throne, sending wrappers tumbling to the floor and disrupting the oddly-peaceful mountain he'd built around him. "The first one I tried - the one Susie gave me - was really nice, so I wanted to try some more, especially since she was cool enough to give it to me!"

It is Rouxls' turn to be confused. "Susie?" Lancer does not seem to understand, so he adds, "Whomst?"

"Oh, Purple Girl!" Lancer exclaims, his happiness radiating off him. "You know, the one who-"

"Who beat up loads of thine subjects? Yes, I heardeth the Stories." Something clicks, and he yelps, "Wait, thou tried candyst _before_ thou father was cast to Prisone?"

Did the kid have a death wish?!

Lancer cringes. "He never found out?"

"Lucky," Rouxls hisses. "Thou're lucky indeedst."

The brat throws him a sheepish grin, as if he knows how carelessly he'd brushed death. They fall into a comfortable silence - Lancer resting amid his mound of wrappers, Rouxls standing at a polite (instinct demands he keep his) distance with a definite reason to not leave, he's _not_ just sticking around for the sake of it.

Crinkling fills the room as Lancer crushes a wrapper in his fist, and Rouxls sighs internally.

 _Just leave,_ he tells himself. _The kid's too attached to resent you for it. Just turn and go._

Instead, like the fool he is, he asks, "What ist wrong, mine Prince?"

Lancer goes to respond but stops midway, mouth hanging open with no words to show for his effort. He grimaces, unfurls the tortured paper, and crunches it once more. "Nothing's wrong."

No verbal reply is required. Rouxls simply raises an eyebrow and Lancer buckles. "Do you think they'll come back?"

Rouxls takes a moment to assess the possibilities and only finds one. "The- the heroes?"

"Yeah," Lancer sighs. "I want to see Susie again. Well, the others were cool, too, but mainly Susie."

"H-her?" Now that Rouxls thinks about it, he had overheard some Rudinns complaining about having to fan Lancer and the purple beast, although he'd been too busy figuring out the best way to slow the heroes' progress to take any notice at the time (the best he'd come up with was not to create challenging puzzles, as one might expect from the Duke of Puzzles because he was shit at that; no, he tampered with puzzles instead: scribbled over instructions, scrubbed out answers, cursed as that infuriating blue child sauntered past all the obstacles he was able to set and scrambled to compensate - it had not been easy, especially once he had no choice but to throw his shoddily-constructed puzzles at them and pray for results).

"Susie's the best!" Lancer exclaims, perking up in his seat. "She taught me how to laugh scarily, and threaten scarily, and generally be super scary! And she helped me come up with evil plans to thwart the others with, although those didn't really go anywhere because we kinda, uh, became friends with them, but still!

"I miss her," he concludes, sagging once more, and Rouxls' heart cracks a little.

He is painfully aware that Lancer had never had friends - his station and his father and his father's station had assured that. And, damn, Rouxls had known the kid would jump at the chance of friendship - he'd set eyes on Rouxls and stuck to him like a roach, after all, despite Rouxls' obvious distaste for the kid (yes, it was _distaste,_ shut up) - but befriending the baddest, meanest, cruellest of the three heroes of legend? That was… not that surprising, actually, given that it was Lancer.

"She has a life, though," Lancer is continuing, "back in her world, and I have Kingly things to do here, like keeping my dad locked up and undoing all the bad things he did. Y'know. Normal stuff."

Rouxls nods wisely. "Verily Importante normal stuff."

"Yeah! And Susie- Susie's probably too busy with her own normal stuff to come back."

Rouxls and Lancer stand together and yet apart, familiar and yet not, because while it warms Rouxls to know that Lancer's found someone he cares for and who seems to care for him back, it also hurts.

Hurts, because, while he's happy for the kid, he's also concerned - what if Susie (and the others, although they seem wholly forgettable) doesn't come back?

(Hurts, because the kid doesn't really need him anymore - but that hurts because he _likes,_ deep down,to be needed and wanted, not because he cares about this stupid child and his stupid affection, he _doesn't_ ).

"If she cares," he says eventually, "and I think she does, she'll returnst."

"And if she doesn't?"

"You'll recovereth," Rouxls shrugs, "and comest back Strongere."

Lancer frowns, crumples a fresh wrapper, stretches it back out and smiles. "Yeah. Yeah! And if, for some impossible reason, Susie doesn't come back (and she will) then I'll always have you, right Lesser Dad?"

Rouxls Kaard is strong. Rouxls Kaard is independent. Rouxls Kaard is tempered by years in the service of a monarch all-too-willing to throw those who incur the slightest displeasure into a cage for the rest of their days. Rouxls Kaard cares for nobody and nobody cares for him.

But Lancer? He can make an exception for Lancer.

"Right," he chokes through trembling lips, hard shell and insistent _I don't cares_ cracked apart by the sincerity in this stupid child's heart. "I shallt always be here."

Lancer grins, picks up one of the few still-wrapped candies and holds it out invitingly. Rouxls, cursing his weak heart but smiling back anyway, closes the distance and takes it.

Later, he rips down the obsolete list of rules from his shop and helps (-slash-supervises-to-avoid-serious-injury) Lancer set it alight.

Lancer has always been too good for his father, anyway.


End file.
